I found these seven ideas about 10 years ago.  The idea behind them is
that restricting food intake is not the solution for people who no
longer can tell when to stop eating instinctively.

Rather than rely on portion-size control or other food-related
techniques, they can learn to rely on their own body signals, once they
are retrained.

I'll post each of these as separate responses.

1. Listen to your body, not your mind.
2. Eat with awareness, not judgment.
3. Eat only when you are physically hungry.
4. Stop eating when you are satisfied, not full.
5. Eat what you want most.
6. Notice how your body feels after eating.
7. Honor your feelings, don't bury them under food.

36 responses total.

Technique One
Listen to your body, not your mind.

The concept here is that your mind and your body are both sending
signals to your brain, but the mind channels are louder right now.  Some
of the exercises include:

A. List the ways your body communicated with you. (i.e.: hunger,
sugar-high, stuffed, exhausted, nervous eating, indigestion, gas) 
B. What made your body (not mind) feel good? (kind of food, quantity of
food, time eaten)? 
C. What made your body (not mind) feel bad? 
D. How could your tell the difference between a body message and a mind
message? 
E. How did your mind communicate with you? 
F. How helpful or unhelpful were your mind's comments? 
G. Did you feel supported or criticized by your mind? 
H. How many of your mind's messages can you trace to an original outside
source?

Technique Two
Eat with awareness, not judgment.

A Conscious Eating Experiment: Select an assortment of your favorite
foods and put a small amount on a plate. 
 
For Example: A pickle slice, a potato chip, a small piece of cheese, a
raisin, an apple slice, a piece of salami.  

Ask a friend or mate to do this with you if possible.  If not, do it on
your own.   Close your eyes, pick up a piece of food and hold it under
your nose.  

Smell it.  Smell is an important part of taste.  When it goes in your
mouth, keep your eyes closed - this helps you concentrate on the food
and not on your surroundings.  

Suck on the piece of food first.  Move it around in your mouth - feel
the texture and different flavors at different locations in your mouth.
  Then, chew the food, swallow and notice the aftertaste.  Take your
time and continue until the plate is empty.  

Did each item taste like you expected it to?  Did it smell better than
it tasted?  Did it taste better than it smelled?  Did you really like it
like you thought?  Did you like certain textures better than others? 
Did you like sucking better than chewing?  Did you experience the
aftertaste? 
 
Each bite is a total experience - keep experiencing the totality.

Technique Three
Eat only when you are physically hungry.

Assess your hunger level from 0 to 10 
0) Absolutely starved! You will overeat.  
1) Too hungry to care what you eat.  You will overeat.  
2) Seriously hungry - You must eat now.  
3) Moderately hungry - You could wait longer.  
4) Slightly hungry - first thoughts of food.  
5) Satisfied, comfortable-not hungry.  
6) Slightly uncomfortable - you can just feel the food in your stomach. 
 7) Uncomfortable - sleepy, sluggish.   8) Very uncomfortable - stomach
hurts.   9) Stuffed.   10) In pain. 

EAT ONLY BETWEEN 2 AND 5.  Your stomach is naturally about the size of
your fist - it does have the ability to stretch much larger.  Your body
only wants to eat a portion about the size of your fist at a time.  This
is approximate - your body (not mind) will tell you how much it wants to
eat.  

You are not limited to 3 fist-sized portions a day - you can eat
whenever you are physically hungry.  Physically hungry, not mentally
hungry.  The most valid reason to wait until you are physically hungry
is because that is when food tastes the best.  If food doesn't taste
good, you are eating when you aren't hungry, or you are eating something
you don't like.  

Technique Four
Stop eating when you are satisfied, not full.

Too full is:
You can feel the food in your body.  

Ways to know you are satisfied:
You are not hungry any more.  You feel comfortable.  
You do not feel the food in your stomach.  
You feel light and energetic after eating.  
You could eat more, but you could also wait.  
You find the flavor of food begins to fade.  It goes from fabulous to
tasteless.  
You are finding it hard to give each bite your full attention.

If you are having trouble stopping at satisfaction (5 on the scale):
You didn't wait for hunger before you started eating.
You were too hungry when you started eating.
You are eating mediocre food.
Eating is more interesting than what you plan on doing next.
You are suppressing an emotional hunger. 
You aren't eating a food as much as you want.

Technique Five
Eat what you want most.

You are probably thinking:  If I eat whatever I want, I would live on
junk food and gain a ton.  It's true, at first you may eat forbidden or
fattening foods; eventually, you will change to the healthy foods your
body needs.  Also if you only eat when you are a 2 on the hunger scale
and stop when you are a 5 on the hunger scale, you will not gain weight.
 Your body will become satisfied faster on calorie dense foods that it
will on low-calorie foods. Never deprive yourself.  Deprivation causes
overeating.

Technique Six
Notice how your body feels after eating.

Your body will tells you what is wants and needs through appetite
cravings.  You will be able to recognize these when you learn to listen
to your body.  

If you are sure you are hungry, but not sure what you want shut your
eyes and imagine asking your stomach to signal its preference among
theses choices.  
1) Hot or cold? 
2) Hearty or light? 
3) Creamy or crunchy? 
4) Sweet, sour or salty? 
5) Spicy or bland? 
6) Protein, carbohydrate or fat? 


Drink for thirst, not to cover hunger.

If you drink while you are eating, it may make it difficult to recognize
satisfaction signals.   Do not think that no-calorie liquids have no
impact on your body and how it feels.  Everything you put into your body
will have an effect on it.  

If you stopped eating at satisfaction and then had a cup of coffee or a
soda, you have just pushed your body into discomfort.  You haven't added
any calories, but you have made your body uncomfortable. 

Technique Seven
Honor your feelings, don't bury them under food.

Non-hunger eating urges are a way for your body to tell you what you
need.  

These steps will open the door to your true needs:

1) Ask yourself: Am I physically hungry? 

2) If the answer is no, ask yourself: What am I really hungry for? 

3) If the answer is something big and seemingly unattainable ask
yourself what baby step you can take to accomplish the larger goal.  A
baby step takes less than 15 minutes or $15 dollars.  

4) Ask your heart, not your head and see what thoughts come up.  It's
usually a simple step.  

5) DO IT!  When you take one baby step at a time, all of your wishes and
needs will get filled faster than you think.  You need to start
fulfilling your needs and wishes now.   

The stages of becoming a normal eater:

You distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and start making
appropriate matches.  

You begin to get in touch with your feelings and begin to honor them. 
 
You learn to stop eating at satisfaction rather than at fullness and you
feel light at the end of a meal.  

You no longer deprive yourself of any food and you experience more
pleasure and satisfaction with eating than ever before.  

Your life begins to change dramatically and this may feel very chaotic
and upsetting.  You may eat to help you cope. 

You learn to judge yourself less and less and you learn how to encourage
and support yourself more and more.  

You notice that you spend less and less time thinking about food.  You
are learning to trust your body.  

Because you are listening to and honoring your feelings and listening to
and honoring your body you are eating less and less frequently for
emotional reasons.  This change is gradual.  

Hmm, I've heard of some of these ideas before and think they're pretty
interesting.   Though I need to mull over them before responding to them
individually...  [But I'm  curious, Colleen, why you chose to enter each
of the responses above as hidden  responses?]

So that people wouldn't be overwhelmed by 8 long posts at once.  

I'm a little uncertain about how backtalk displays things.  I know if I
see an extremely long post 0, or 8 long responses at once, I skip over
reading them.

I thought if I displayed them one at a time, rather than all at once,
they wouldn't be so easily skimmed through.  

Suggestions about how to do something like this are very welcome.  I
toyed with the idea of posting one, then waiting for comments, then
posting the next, getting comments, etc.  

That makes it very difficult to come back later and read through them
all at once.  This is the kind of information that is likely to be
useful for a long time, unlike "what's on sale this week".  

Anyone got suggestions on how to do this?  Should I just unhide
everything right now?

My suggestion - unhide everything now and let the reader pace him or 
herself.

I always find your entries interesting and will probably read this in one 
sitting, next time I'm on.

This is exactly the approach I have been trying to follow for a while 
now. I first heard of it in a book written by some eating disorder 
specialists. The book is called The Diet Survivors Handbook. 

I still emotionally overeat sometimes but very rarely. Mostly I eat 
what I want and when I want. The hardest part for me and what I am 
working on constantly is the "stop eating when satisfied, not full" 
part. I generally either stop eating when I am full and really cant 
eat another bite or I stop eating when the food is gone. In this way, 
small portions help me. I usually dole out small portions but always 
with permission to go back and get more if I want to. 

Number 3, the one about only eating when you are physically hungry,
isn't always practical. In fact it is rarely practical.

When I am working, my lunch time is largely determined by what I have
scheduled for the day. I can't schedule a meeting telling somebody that
it will be at 1:00pm, unless I don't get hungry until 12:30 which means
the meeting will start a half hour late. People wouldn't be happy with
me and my schedule would conflict with everyone else's if they followed
the same advice.

So, what should I do? Should I avoid eating during work and instead eat
a large breakfast and large dinner and avoid lunch? That's actually
worked for me in the past although that's no indication it will still
work after I turn 40.

nharmon, that problem is doubled if you are trying to match your hunger
patterns to someone (or ones) you live with.  

The way I dealt with it was to keep things in my desk or the fridge that I
could eat while I worked.  A couple boiled eggs, some cheese cubes, some
fruit, even a sandwich cut into quarters.  

Remember the idea is to eat after level 2 hunger but before level 5 hunger.
I seldom had to work without any break during that whole 2-5 procession.  

At home, I ate when I was hungry.  I felt that family meals were
social/nurturing events.  Everyone had to be at the table when meals were
served.  You could eat as much or as little as you liked, but only what was
on the table.  There was no "Mom, I don't like this, fix me something else".

What was in the refrigerator for everyone else was healthy food for me, just
lots of it.  If you weren't hungry at dinner time, you could have leftovers
later.  (Thank god for microwave ovens).  

Fortunately, my kids were (mostly) adventurous (sp?) eaters.  Everyone was
allowed to have a list of 2 things they refused to eat.  You had to give the
cook 24 hours notice if you changed your list.  One kid went through a
no-onions stage that made cooking a real challenge.  

Sick people are supposed to eat even if not hungry.

I think that since sick people arent in danger of overeating, it is 
probably ok for them to eat even when they are not hungry. 

I assume the statement "sick people are supposed to xxxxx" is a
generalization based on your own situation.  

As with most broad statements, it's probably wrong at least as often as
it is right.  

When I'm sick my doctor tells me to eat only if I'm hungry.  Usually, I
feel better faster if I don't force food into myself.  I almost always
lose my appetite when I get sick, but I'm not in any danger of
starvation, so it really hasn't become a medical issue.  

He does make me monitor my water intake, to make sure I don't get
dehydrated.  But other than that, he tells me to trust what my body is
telling me.  

There's a bit of folklore that has always puzzled me:  "Feed a cold and
starve a fever".  (The first puzzle is always whether I've got them in
the right order). Anyone have any clues where that came from or what
assumptions it's based on?

Well who wudda thunk it?
------------------------
Feed a cold, starve a fever" may be right

    * 09:30 11 January 2002
    * From New Scientist Print Edition. 
    * Michael Le Page

The maxim "feed a cold, starve a fever" may be right after all,
researchers have discovered.

Until now, most doctors and nutritionists have rejected the idea as a
myth. But Dutch scientists have found that eating a meal boosts the type
of immune response that destroys the viruses responsible for colds,
while fasting stimulates the response that tackles the bacterial
infections responsible for most fevers.

[Collen, thanks for 'unhiding' the earlier responses... I'm printing
this up to read later  sometime when I'm offline...]

Glad you're finding it useful.  It was a welcome addition to my ways of
thinking about food.  

So how are people supposed to deal with "emotional" eating vs eating only when
physically hungry?  Very often, at least during the time we eat for emotional
reasons, we can justify why we need to eat for those "emotional" reasons. And
very often, they feel just as real as when we need to eat for physical
reasons.

Denise,

Get the book mentioned by slynne.  What I've posted is just snippets. 
The book has a whole series of exercises and techniques to help you
learn to listen more clearly.  

The book is available to you through your local library.  If they don't
have it on their shelves, they can request it through the Michigan E
Library system.  Ann Arbor has it I think because I can't imagine where
else I read it.  (I couldn't afford to live with myself if I didn't have
a library nearby).  

I can lend you my copy too if you want

Sure, I'd love to check it out!  Maybe we can meet up at a HH sometime
as your schedule  permits?

Sure. But I probably wont be able to do any HH for quite a while unless 
I get really fortunate in my job hunt. Send me your address and I'll 
mail it to you (if I can find it)

[Or let me know if/when you'd want to meet up some other time, maybe to
get a drink or  some such thing...]

That would be fun, denise :) 

Might I propose a quick trip to the Mexican grocery, followed by a drink
somewhere in Ypsi?  I'd love to be part of the chat about the book.  

Yeah. I think that would be really cool. I am leaving for Nova Scotia 
in a week though but maybe after I get back if that isnt too long for 
you guys? (I get back on Aug 15).

I'll bring the PC2.0 with me too.  Enjoy Nova Scotia.  I spent a couple
weeks biking around PEI a few summers ago.

Cool, another grexpedition [whoever wants to come, that's fine with me];
just let us know  when's a good time, Lynne.

Ok! I'll check in when I get back from NS

I've been somewhat more aware of eating and hunger lately.  One thing
I've been  aware of is that over the past few months, for whatever
reason, I don't eat anything  even when I know I'm hungry.  I've never
been one to eat much, if anything, when I  first get up in the morning. 
But lately, I've been taking it to the extreme on many  occasions,
sometimes not eating til afternoon [there have been times when its been
as  late as 5pm before I eat].  I'm hungry, often, many hours before I
do decide to fix  something and eat it.  Why I am doing this, I really
don't know.

Then, too go along with this--when I do sit down to eat, I eat the
portion that I think  should make me full.  They say that we don't feel
fullness until 20 or so minutes after  consuming the food.  But portion
size that used to fill me up and/or make me feel  stuffed, I'm STILL
feeling hungry later.  Sometimes I do think its because of the fact 
that I hadn't eaten in so long but other times, I wonder why the volume
I did consume,  didn't fill me up when it seemingly should have [based
on the size of my stomach]. So  how much of this is physical hunger and
how much is mental?  Either way, I'm still ' hungry' and feel I
could/should eat more.  But a lot of times, I don't [and the hunger 
usually doesn't go away, so that should mean it IS a
physical/physiological need].

It's not that I don't LIKE to eat because I really do enjoy eating and I
do admit that  there have been plenty of times when I've had too much in
one sitting.  And I'm not  necessarily doing it for weight-loss reasons
because I know that starving isn't the way  to go.  I *have* lost a fair
amount of weight since mid-December but have recently  gained about 5
pounds back.  Probably because, though I'm eating less overall, 
recently I had been eating higher calorie foods.  

And I do know that as we decrease our overall weight by reducing too
many calories  each day, it can mess up your metabolism and how
effeciently you use and need  calories...

So, these are just ramblings about my latest eating trends; very unusual
for me and its  not necessarily a good thing for me to continue in this
mode of eating.

My first impression is that by going past the 5 on the hunger scale, you are
again messing with the hunger/food volume/food neurons.  

Perhaps if we are extremely hungry, our body (rightfully) overrides the
physically full messages with the not-suffienct-food system messages.  

Is there some way to force yourself to eat a small amount when you first get
hungry?  A couple tablespoons of peanut butter, or a couple hardboiled eggs
might help.   Just getting yourself into "I'm feeling hungry so I take care
of myself by eating".  

Even if you have to carry baggies of People Chow, or cheese and crackers, or
whatever, you might be better off taking care of yourself than careening way
past 5.

Yeah, I need to do *something* to get out of this mode--so I have to TRY
and make  myself eat when I first get hungry [and maybe some portable
snacks with me while I'm  out... Colleen, we need you to start
marketing/selling the PC!].


I've gone through periods of time going the other extreme, in
wanting/needing to eat all  the time!  I remember in the not so distant
past when I wasn't able to get my meds...  [One of them has a side
effect that it decreases my appetite.]  So while I was off this  med, I
just HAD to eat, even getting up 1 or 2 times during the night to get
something  before going back to bed again.  And I felt the need to
continue eating even when I was  past being full; it was like I was
possessed or something...

Yeah. I need to remember to bug you for the recipe for People Chow, 
colleen. Because carrying baggies of the stuff around is just the 
perfect thing for eating when hungry. 

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